The National Interest Why the Ukraine War Is About Vladimir Putin’s Survival September 24, 2025 By: David Kirichenko, and Alexander J. Motyl

 The National Interest 

Why the Ukraine War Is About Vladimir Putin’s Survival

September 24, 2025

By: David Kirichenko, and Alexander J. Motyl

Vladimir Putin has staked the fate of his presidency, and Russian imperial ambitions, on the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s war on Ukraine was never really about NATO expansion or Western security guarantees. It has always been about Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions—and his personal survival.

NATO has consistently shown little interest in extending membership to Ukraine, and neither have Ukrainians for most of their post-independence history. Indeed, Ukraine was largely neutral until Russia first invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and, despite Russia’s full-scale second invasion in 2022, many NATO states remain skeptical about Ukraine’s accession to the alliance.

Russia’s insistence back in late 2021 and more recently on security guarantees for itself is no less of a canard, since it knows, as well as NATO, that the militaries of most alliance members are in no condition to repel drones, not to mention launch an invasion of Russia.

Throughout its history, the Russian state consistently waged war as a means of sustaining autocratic rule—a point George Kennan understood when he recommended containing Soviet expansion as a means of undermining the USSR. Unsurprisingly, every Russian ruler worked diligently to turn the wheels of imperial expansion. This was as true of the czars as it was with the Soviets, and now with Putin. Even Boris Yeltsin, whom the West lionized, hoped to reconstruct the empire through the Commonwealth of Independent States.

The Kremlin’s goal is total control in Russia and the subjugation of the Ukrainian people, the two ends being mutually supportive. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, once warned: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”

For Putin, Ukraine’s independence and democracy pose an existential threat. A free and successful Ukraine exposes the lie at the heart of his regime, namely that Russia can only be stable under centralized authoritarian control. If Ukrainians can choose a different path—one that is democratic and prosperous—Russians may one day demand the same.

Putin’s manipulation of history is thus intended to deny Ukraine’s existence. Central to that misinterpretation—as Tucker Carlson learned during his interview with the Russian president—is the myth of the Principality of Muscovy’s origins. Muscovy’s rise in the 1400s was built on the lie that it was the heir to Kyivan Rus. In reality, Rus was a medieval state centered on Kyiv that had collapsed under Mongol invasions long before Muscovy emerged as the core state of the future Russian Empire. Muscovite rulers rewrote history to claim this legacy, using the myth to justify conquest. Putin repeats the same fabrication today to deny Ukraine’s sovereignty and legitimize his war.

The roots of Putin’s obsession with Ukraine trace back to at least 2004, when Ukraine faced a defining presidential contest. Barred from a third term, President Leonid Kuchma sought a loyal successor and backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a regional strongman from Donetsk. Reformist Viktor Yushchenko, a former central banker and brief prime minister, offered the opposite: a Ukraine oriented toward Europe and democracy.

The 2004 Orange Revolution upended the Kremlin’s plans. Mass protests against election fraud propelled Yushchenko into office despite Moscow’s heavy-handed interference. This was more than a defeat for Russia’s preferred candidate—it was a humiliation for Putin and a direct challenge to his worldview.

From that moment forward, Moscow’s foreign policy hardened. The Kremlin recast democracy as a threat, Russian hyper-nationalism as a necessity, and military aggression as a tool of survival. Putin began railing against so-called “color revolutions,” seeing in them not just Ukraine’s defiance but a dangerous template that Russians themselves might someday follow.

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In 2008, Georgia was the initial target of the imperial whiplash for Putin as Russian forces attacked the country. That same year, Putin claimed to then-US President George W. Bush that Ukraine wasn’t a real country. 

Yet another formative trauma came in 2011. While serving as prime minister, Putin watched the NATO-led intervention in Libya and the brutal death of Muammar Gaddafi. He reportedly replayed Gaddafi’s gruesome death, convinced that strongmen who compromise with the West seal their own fate. For him, Gaddafi’s mistake was not tyranny but openness.

The massive street protests in Moscow in 2011–2012, sparked by anger over electoral fraud, only reinforced this fear, convincing Putin that democratic movements could one day threaten his grip on power inside Russia.

And then came the full-scale invasion of recalcitrant Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Perhaps Putin, now in his 70s, believed he was running out of time to conquer Ukraine. The 2014 Euromaidan revolution and the rebuilding of Ukraine’s army convinced him that his window of opportunity was closing.

Yet today, he seems to believe time is once again on his side—not only on the battlefield but also in life itself. Caught on a hot mic in Beijing discussing organ transplants and biotechnology with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Putin mused about the possibility of living to the age of 150. Convinced he may have some years yet left, he may view Ukraine not as a fleeting gamble, but as a generational quest to complete in order to restore the empire. 

However, Putin now faces a domestic challenge: the growing discontent of the Russian people. Although many are profiting from the war, with even a new middle class emerging from Russia’s militarized economy (dubbed “Deathonomics”), most average Russians are experiencing a drop in living standards due to Putin’s neglect of the consumer economy. To make things worse, even the militarized economy has stopped growing, as the deficit and inflation increase, and Russia is poised to enter a period of stagflation. 

Putin understands that his political survival is increasingly pegged to constant confrontation with the West. And if many elites are profiting from the war, why would they want it to stop?

Allowing the war to continue keeps Russia in a constant state of mobilization, where dissent is crushed and rivals are killed. The bloated military-industrial complex sustains patronage networks for loyal elites.

At the same time, the war strengthens Putin’s ideological narrative of rebuilding a Russian empire and confronting a West that he claims seeks to contain it. Until the empire is defeated, Putin will keep coming back for more, his appetite for escalation growing as the economy falters and his legitimacy and authority come under threat.

If the Trump administration continues pressing for a peace deal without real leverage, it plays directly into Putin’s hands. A bad peace deal will invite future aggression and be a shot in the arm of Russian imperialism and autocracy. Ukraine won’t be Putin’s last target.

About the Authors: David Kirichenko and Alexander Motyl

David Kirichenko is an Associate Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. His work on warfare has been featured in publications such as the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, and the Modern Warfare Institute, among others. Follow him on X: @DVKirichenko.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia, and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires, and theory, he is the author of ten books of nonfiction, as well as Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires and Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.

Image: Photoibo / Shutterstock.com.